Rashomon

“Rashomon” is a 1950 Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa, highly regarded for its philosophical undertones and its exploration of the unfathomable human psyche, “Rashomon” is a brilliantly spun riddle. It is about the four people, who give four different versions of the testimonies at the court, on the recently occurred crime. I’d like to focus here on what I think is the rarest of Kurosawa’a abilities: the way he changes the eye of the camera- and the composition of the world it creates for us, for each of the narratives- some are impressionistic; some flat and full of contrast; some deep. Some are composed around people, some around the environment with people in it, some around fleeting motion. Sometimes the words are the organizing principle, sometimes images.

The story itself deserves a mention: A husband & wife traveling through woods are attacked by a thief, who ties up the husband and rapes the wife. This is as much of the story as we can be sure of. The husband ends up dead of a stab wound. How did he die? Who was responsible? Each of the three give their accounts before a court (the dead husband through a medium!), and each account is entirely different. A woodcutter who witnessed the events gives a fourth, entirely different, account.

“Rashomon” is very much a visual film. It would be reduced to unimportant and insignificant fare without the cinematography, which captures the mood and feel of the jungle perfectly, as does the score. The film achieves an epic feel very rare for films filmed in fullscreen, especially during the battle between the bandit and the samurai during the last telling of the story. Kurosawa was also wise enough to choose a location for the film that would accurately capture the eerie, slightly disturbing mood of the story.

According to my teacher Mr. P M Krishnaraj {Reference}-

My favourite shot in the movie is one which starts with the husband and wife kneeling, facing each other, a view of the wife over the shoulder of the husband; the camera then moves round to the side and simultaneously zooms in on the wife’s profile; then pulls back behind the wife, ending with a view of the husband’s face over the shoulder of the wife – a mirror image of the initial shot in the sequence. Absolutely awesome! And dating from 1950! Unbelievable!

I’ll give it 10 on 10.